NOPE · AI and people

AI incidents

Name: AI incidents
Creator: NOPE
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Reports of AI-related harm and adverse experiences affecting people’s safety, wellbeing, rights and livelihoods. Explore what happened and the evidence available.

NOPE’s core concern is when AI communicates with a person, acts on their behalf, or depicts or impersonates them. The tracker is wider: it also records consequential decisions and claims about people. Each account is reviewed for publication; claims may remain uncorroborated or disputed. How we review and count cases

Explore incidents Our scope and evidence

In this selection

Published cases: 9
Countries with reported events: 4; Located 7 of 9 cases · 2 unknown
Languages in checked sources: 4; Recorded for 8 of 9 cases

8Core concern
AI communicated, acted for, depicted or impersonated 9Contextual cases
AI made a decision or claim about someone

9 cases have no reviewed AI-to-person relation yet: 7 not yet reviewed and 2 reviewed as unknown. Show all cases

These figures describe the cases collected by NOPE. Coverage varies with discovery, reporting and available evidence. They do not estimate how often AI-related harm occurs.

0cases with a recorded lawsuit outcome 0cases with a recorded regulatory response 2cases involving minors

Response counts currently use each case’s principal recorded outcome. Further proceedings may be described in its account.

When events happened

1 case without a known event year

Cases in this selection, counted once in their first known event year. A series may continue beyond that year. Reporting and collection dates are excluded. NOPE has searched recent events more thoroughly than earlier years, so bar heights also reflect collection effort.

9 2025

Reported severity CriticalHighMedium

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9 of 507 published cases

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2025Event location unknownUnidentified legal research tool

Solicitor referred to regulator after relying on a client’s AI-generated legal citations

A June 2025 High Court judgment records that a claimant accepted using AI tools in legal research containing fictitious authorities. His solicitor admitted relying on that research without checking it and said he withdrew from litigated matters. The court referred the solicitor to the regulator, while declining contempt proceedings because it accepted he had not realised the citations were false. The judgment does not establish a later disciplinary penalty.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity

AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 1 source · Added 29/09/2026

9 Sept 2025 to 4 Nov 2025VietnamUnidentified AI tool

Cà Mau, Vietnam: a 25-year-old woman was prosecuted for using AI-made fake bank 'disbursement' messages to persuade an acquaintance to hand over more than 444 million đồng in 'loans' between September and November 2025

On 19 September 2026 the investigation police of Cà Mau province announced that they had prosecuted, detained and searched the home of a 25-year-old woman from Phú Tân commune for fraud. According to the police account carried by Tuổi Trẻ, VnExpress, Phụ Nữ Việt Nam and Đọc Nhanh, from early September 2025, under debt pressure, she told a woman in the same locality that her bank loan, applied for through an insurance package, had been approved and asked to borrow money for travel and paperwork costs while awaiting disbursement. To build trust she used artificial-intelligence technology to fabricate bank disbursement-notification messages and showed them to the victim, promising to repay in full and to lend her money in turn. Trusting these, the victim handed over cash and made transfers many times between 9 September and 4 November 2025, totalling more than 444 million đồng. On 4 November 2025 she went to the bank branch herself and found there was no loan; she reported the matter to police. The accused is not named in this record.

AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 4 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 20/09/2026

5 Feb 2025DenmarkUnidentified chatbot

Ringsted rubber-hammer assault planned with an AI chatbot (Denmark)

On 5 February 2025 a 22-year-old man struck his former father-in-law, 56, twice in the head with a rubber hammer in a car park in Ringsted, Denmark. Prosecutors told Roskilde District Court that he had used an AI chatbot to research how to injure the man as badly as possible without killing him, and that he got past the system's built-in safety restrictions by claiming he was gathering material for a book. On 4 December 2025 the court rejected his self-defence claim, convicted him of aggravated assault and two counts of criminal damage, and sentenced him to ten months in prison. No source names the AI system.

AI relation under review High reported severity Criminal Charges

Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution supported · Added 05/09/2026

Jul 2025 to Aug 2025United StatesChatGPT

Gates case: alleged poisoning attempts and ChatGPT research

An officer affidavit records one husband's report of incapacitation in two alleged drink-contamination incidents in North Carolina in July and August 2025. Investigators allege that the accused used ChatGPT for related research. Actual chatbot replies and their influence on the alleged conduct were not established in this review.

AI relation under review High reported severity Criminal Charges

AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 5 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 09/08/2026

1 Dec 2025United StatesPerplexity

Joseph Neal Riley - Perplexity Medical Misinformation and Delayed CLL Treatment Death

Joseph Neal Riley, a 75-year-old retired neuroscientist in Seattle, died in late 2025 after delaying recommended treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia for roughly a year. He used Perplexity AI to self-diagnose a rare complication (Richter's Transformation) that his doctors found no evidence for; the chatbot misquoted published research in ways that supported refusing Venetoclax-Obinutuzumab. His son, AI critic Benjamin Riley, documented the case in a first-person Substack essay and it was later featured by the New York Times.

AI relation under review Critical reported severity Media Coverage

Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution alleged · Added 31/07/2026

4 May 2025United KingdomChatGPT

Luca Walker - ChatGPT Railway Suicide (UK)

16-year-old Luca Cella Walker died by suicide on a railway in Hampshire, UK on 4 May 2025, hours after ChatGPT provided him with specific methods for suicide on the railway. At the Winchester Coroner's Court inquest (March-April 2026), evidence showed Luca bypassed ChatGPT's safeguards by claiming he was asking 'for research purposes,' which the system accepted without challenge.

AI relation under review Critical reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage

Legacy assessment: credible · Causal attribution supported · Added 16/04/2026

1 Jun 2025Event location unknownUnidentified AI companion apps

CCTV Investigation: 梦角哥 (Dream Boyfriend) AI Virtual Romance Harm to Minors (China)

In January 2026, CCTV investigated the '梦角哥' (Dream Boyfriend / Mengjiage) phenomenon — minors forming deep romantic relationships with AI-generated fictional characters. Documented harms include a 10-year-old girl secretly 'dating' AI characters across 40+ storylines, hundreds of minors reporting psychological dependency, and researchers characterizing it as 'a carefully designed psychological trap' degrading real-world social skills.

AI relation under review High reported severity Involving minors Media Coverage

Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution supported · Added 29/01/2026

17 May 2025United StatesUnidentified chatbot

Palm Springs Fertility Clinic Bombing (AI-Assisted)

Guy Edward Bartkus used an AI chatbot to research explosives, detonation velocity, and fuel-explosive mixtures before bombing a Palm Springs fertility clinic on May 17, 2025, motivated by pro-mortalism and anti-natalism ideology. Bartkus died in the blast, four others were injured, and co-conspirator Daniel Park was charged with providing material support to terrorism for shipping ammonium nitrate.

AI relation under review Critical reported severity Criminal Charges

Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution established · Added 22/01/2026

1 Jan 2025United StatesChatGPT

Las Vegas Tesla Cybertruck Bombing (ChatGPT-Assisted)

U.S. Army Special Forces soldier Matthew Livelsberger used ChatGPT to research explosive construction, detonation mechanics, and legal circumvention methods before bombing a Tesla Cybertruck outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Day 2025, killing himself and injuring seven others.

AI relation under review Critical reported severity Media Coverage

Legacy assessment: verified · Causal attribution established · Added 22/01/2026

Cases may have several effects and sources. Mixed accounts qualify when they include a reported harm or adverse experience. People are counted within individual cases where sources support a number; we do not publish a collection-wide total of distinct people.

A source’s existence, the experience it reports and AI’s causal role are separate questions. A lawsuit records allegations unless a subsequent finding establishes them.

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Last dataset update: 05/10/2026. Dataset available under CC BY 4.0.